There’s no avoiding the fact that the iPhone has revolutionised the mobile phone industry, becoming one of the most popular and talked about mobile device on the planet.

Now that the iPhone has become mass market, there is a huge market for personalisation, specifically with offering wallpapers designed for the iPhone’s resolution (currently present on Standby mode but soon to become part of the menu background screen in OS 4.0).

When I recently designed a promotional iPhone wallpaper for my Funky House Finesse show, I suddenly realised there was only a small area (320 × 267px) on the screen for getting a message across without being affected by surrounding text and functionality such as the time and unlock slider.

To make this process easier in the future, I created a standard template overlay which can be used to position graphical elements below before rendering.

Download the iPhone Wallpaper Template (32-bit semi-transparent PNG)

The above image can be used in most image composition tools like Photoshop or Fireworks and then hidden prior to exporting.

Hopefully, you’ll find this useful if you come to design your own iPhone wallpapers. If you do, be sure to post a link to your design in the comments.

Dropbox has been one of the most valuable tools I use in my job. It allows me to backup my project files online, knowing that any older revisions are kept version controlled, and easily share files and folders with other devices and people. There is even a free Dropbox iPhone app for remote quick access to your Dropbox while on the go.

One small thing that bugs me though is the icon used on the Mac interface. It’s consistent with the standard Mac folder icon but I prefer to see the full colour Dropbox icon instead. It was relatively straight forward to change this.

1. View this this 32-bit Dropbox icon and copy (Cmd+C) into memory
2. Locate the Dropbox folder in Finder (usually in your User profile folder)
3. Open the Info panel (Cmd+I)
4. Highlight the Dropbox folder icon at the top of the Info panel next to the name (it’ll glow slightly)
5. Paste (Cmd+V) the cached image into place
6. The new icon should cascade throughout all Finder dialog boxes

You can use this technique to change any icons in Mac OSX. It’s worth noting OSX supports alpha transparency on icons so, if you want to preserve shadows, glows or anti-aliased edges, make sure you copy from a source file that supports alpha transparency (such as 32-bit PNGs).

Many businesses are jumping on the Twitter bandwagon at the moment, whether it’s to promote new services or interact directly with their customers on a one-to-one basis.

However, the problem with many companies are the restrictions of firewalls to avoid heavy abuse of social network use by untrustworthy staff members.

I realised this morning you don’t need to visit twitter.com to manage the your Twitter account – there are plenty of other web-based Twitter applications setup which are unlikely to be listed in the firewall’s blacklist, essentially acting as a proxy to access Twitter’s services indirectly.

Here are a few to try out:

Br.st

Very well designed and simple to use interface with additional multimedia functionality.

Twithive

More focussed on lists and channels of activity streams.

Brizzly

The added benefit of connecting with Facebook as well

Seesmic

Web-based version of the popular Twitter desktop application

There are also a selection of web-based Twitter apps intended as mobile web apps but work perfectly well on the desktop, especially in a sidebar of your browser:

Dabr
Slandr
Hahlo

Try a few to see which one you prefer – each have their own perks.

On a sidenote, if you haven’t already, install a “decent” browser like Firefox, Google Chrome, Opera or Safari. All these browsers are far superior to the corporate preference of Internet Explorer and tend to cope better when it comes to web-based apps.

Many of these also have the ability to enhance the browser with extensions and addons to interact with social networks (although you may still encounter firewall issues with these). You may also find that most company policies don’t allow you to install software but it wouldn’t hurt to ask your friendly IT department for some assistance.

It’s a new year so time for another season of sports fixtures, all delivered directly to your calendar applications.

Over the last few years, you may have noticed I’ve been building quite a collection of sports-related calendar services which allow you to download or subscribe to certain sports fixtures throughout the year, making it easier to organise your social life. This year is no different.

6 Nations

The first sporting event of the year we’ll be embracing is the 6 Nations rugby competition between the Home Nations (England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland), France and Italy. This all kicks off on Saturday 6th February 2010 between Ireland and Italy at Croke Park and continues through to Saturday 20th March 2010.

To make sure you don’t miss any fixtures, download or subscribe to the 6 Nations fixtures calendar. Not much has changed on the website since last year with regards to design or functionality but, if you have any ideas for improvements, don’t hesitate to send them through.

Formula 1

Just as the 6 Nations competition comes to an end, the Formula 1 season will be starting with the Bahrain Grand Prix in Sakhir on Sunday 14th March 2010.

Working with the talented Andy Higgs, we’ve now updated the website inline with the new season and you’re now able to download or subscribe to the Formula 1 season calendar for 2010.

We’ve got a few improvements planned for the user interface later in the year but, to make sure you don’t miss any of the schedule, the calendar is readily available.

UEFA Champions League & Europa League

Last year, a team of us including Brian Suda - the inspiration behind all these calendar services - worked directly with UEFA on a dedicated solution for delivering the entire fixture schedule as downloadable UEFA calendar files, for both the UEFA Champions League and UEFA Cup (now know as the UEFA Europa League). Users were also able to access individual club calendars to focus specifically on a club of interest.

The original service was so well received, UEFA were keen to build on the service and offered us an opportunity to extend the functionality for the new season. Our proposal for Phase 2 was well received by the organisation and their Media & Technology department so we are now in full swing on the improved system architecture and additional functionality, scheduled for a three phase rollout over the next six months.

Everyone involved in the project is really excited about some of the upcoming functionality and, hopefully, the large user demographic will enjoy it as much as we will.

World Cup 2010

On the 11th June, the biggest football tournament in the World starts in South Africa - World Cup 2010.

With the huge success of the original World Cup KickOff - the first sports-based calendar service we built - we would have been foolish to ignore this opportunity.

Work has already began on the updated solution with Gareth Brown (from One Black Bear) working on the user interface while Brian and I continue to work on the development.

We’re also lining up an interesting partnership with London startup which should add some really special value to the user experience. It’s too early to say at this stage but, needless to say, it is going to be exciting.

We’re planning to launch this project for May 2010, giving you a month or so to plan your World Cup social calendar. If we can release it sooner, we certainly will but it’s better to be realistic than optimistic some times - best follow @worldcupko on Twitter for updates